For a guy who couldn’t have found Towson on a map five years ago, Nicolas Timberlake has sure morphed into a Marylander since then.
During these college basketball transfer-intensive times, the graduate guard from Massachusetts never thought about playing anywhere but in the Old Line State just outside of Baltimore. Good for him, and even better for the Towson, which got off to an 8-4 start as the odds-on favorite to win the Colonial Athletic Association this season.
Timberlake is at the forefront of the Tigers’ attack, ping-ponging the team scoring lead back and forth with classmate Cam Holden, and generally providing the heady kind of play that perhaps only head coach Pat Skerry forecast a few years back.
“He’s talented and he’s competitive and he’s got unbelievable drive,” Skerry said. “He’s at the top of the food chain with [his competitiveness]. He has gotten better every year. He’s a committed guy.”
“Committed” is a nice word for the fiery 6-foot-4, 205-pound guard, who while plying his skilled trade on the perimeter can also attack the rack with many of the best in the CAA. The 6-foot-5 Holden, a Forsyth, Ga., native, by way of Tennessee-Martin, is the same kind of “driven” player. The two veterans have helped put more roar in the Tigers along with robust rebounder Charles Thompson and sharpshooter Jason Gibson.
“They woke our team up to the culture of competitiveness you have to bring on a daily basis here,” Skerry said of the veteran core. “I think we’re competitive and a connected group. They’re just really a good group of guys.”
And after a 25-win season that ended with CAA semifinal and first-round NIT losses, the Tigers may have a better appetite. Yep, they’re hungrier as well.
“The goal is always March Madness,” Timberlake said. “Having the season we had last year and just coming up short, it definitely hurts. For everyone on the team right now it’s always in the back of your mind.”
Truth be told, Timberlake not letting something like that go is on brand. His default setting is competitive bordering on feisty, and that’s just fine with Skerry. The coach is always looking for players who want to prove something and is forever seeking an edge in recruiting, even via genealogy.
“I knew how good a player his dad was, and I always thought recruiting genes was important,” said Skerry, a fellow Massachusetts native who knew all about Jeff Timberlake’s Hall of Fame career at Boston University as a blue-collar player who could flash blueblood-type ability when the Terriers needed it most.
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Skerry famously spotted the trademark intensity back in 2018 in a playoff rout while the younger Timberlake was playing at Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire. Timberlake was there because no Division I schools had taken notice of him at Braintree High School. Kimball was being routed despite Timberlake’s 24.0 points-per-game average that season, his versatility on the floor and Class AA All-New England Prep background.
“I saw how edgy [Timberlake] was,” Skerry recalled. “He made a couple of threes late, got into a couple of pushing, shoving matches. I just liked his edge. We’ve done well with guys that play with a chip on their shoulder, and he has been the poster child for that.”
As a child, Timberlake grew up in a family committed to athletics, and that’s a serious understatement. Besides his dad on the hardwood, his mother, Dineen, was a track star, and he had two uncles play college hockey. Three cousins are on the college ice now. Younger sister Adriana is a star guard at Southern New Hampshire University. She is noted for her competitiveness, too.
“My parents and particularly my mom and her side of the family, they made me competitive,” Timberlake admitted. “My sister and I are outliers playing college basketball [instead of hockey] and it’s made us the people we are today. And our dad was always in a gym and on us to be better.”
It’s Dineen, though, that may be the most tenacious Timberlake.
“My mom has a little edge to her, and everyone says my competitive spirit comes from her,” Timberlake said. “She’s always loud, no matter where we are. My first college game I played in was at Virginia, sold out, 20,000 people there and they’re screaming the whole game. I can remember my mom and hearing everything she said. Her being competitive on the sideline gets me more fired up.”
So far from home and with his sister playing, too, Timberlake doesn’t get to hear that voice in the stands that often, though his family will be around more down the stretch this year stalking the Tigers.
Timberlake chose hoops over hockey in the seventh grade. Despite his obvious athletic versatility, he was unable to play two winter sports simultaneously. A big part of that decision was his father and the chance to follow in his footsteps, but BU or really any Division I program didn’t cooperate until Skerry showed up.
In addition to Skerry remembering Jeff Timberlake’s playing days, Towson assistant Kevin Clark was on the same staff with Jeff at George Washington in the mid-’90s, so the Tigers had a lot of intel on the Timberlakes.
“I’m happy the way that worked out because otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” the younger Timberlake said. “If you had told me to point where Towson was on a map back then I would have had no idea where it was. Coach Skerry was recruiting me all along but went the whole year without talking to me, then shows up the last game and we lost by 40. Then he offered me [a scholarship].
“Then he was nonstop annoying, just texting me, calling me, asking what I’m doing every single day. I kind of felt that love. He was the only coach to actually visit our house, sit down and have dinner with my whole family. That meant a lot.”
Timberlake has paid back that attention, improving his body and his game each season at Towson.
“He’s a guy that has a chance to make a lot of money playing basketball for a while,” Skerry said. “We’ll get after each other, but he’s one of my all-time favorite guys for the passion he brings.”
It’s a double-edged sword. That competitiveness made Timberlake the All-CAA performer he is, but Skerry thinks Timberlake channeling his emotions just a bit more can make him even better. Timberlake, as per usual, sees the whole court and the game, and a career in it, developing before him.
“I was more of a hothead when I was younger, and [my father] has always taught me about mental toughness and how important it is,” Timberlake said. “It’s probably the most important thing he taught me. I was a little bit of a hothead when I was younger and would always let things get to me. Used to be I would get upset and couldn’t cool down and get back into the zone. That was really his big thing with me.”
Now the big thing is getting the Tigers their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1991, which came out of the old East Coast Conference.
“I feel like Towson had been on the down-low until recently,” Timberlake said. “But from last year to this year I feel like a lot of people know about Towson and that it’s a legit winning culture.”
And now Timberlake & Co. have a chance to put Towson on the basketball map in a big way.
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox
Issue 278: December 2022 / January 2023
Originally published Dec. 21, 2022